The provocative thesis and substantive variety of writings examined make Rino Coluccello’s Challenging the Mafia Mystique a welcome contribution to the relatively few books that specifically analyse representations of the Mafia in Sicily, as crafted in an extensive body of literature. The overarching argument elaborated in the study maintains that in the very first material signs of the Mafia, traced back to the brigands in the eighteenth century as proto-mafiosi, such features as honour, loyalty, and omertà are made manifest in various writings, both fabricating and legitimising the Mafia mystique until the 1950s, when works by Danilo Dolci and then Leonardo Sciascia mark a turning point toward denunciation of the Mafia as the dominant trend among intellectuals and the general public alike. This thesis structures the chronological organisation of the nine chapters and determines the choice of source texts analysed, which are selected to illustrate what Coluccello considers the main tendencies of the historical period. Conceiving of literature in its broadest sense, the author discusses a range of representations of the Mafia in Sicily, produced in travel writings, plays, novels, and parliamentary inquiries, as well as works in cultural anthropology and sociology. A substantive bibliography and index provide useful information for readers.

Among the strengths of Coluccello’s study is the way he traces both the historical, changing elements constituting the Mafia and its relations with the ruling elite, and the cultural discourses that make up its idealised image as an honourable society whose beliefs, codes, and practices ostensibly bear Sicilian values. The opening chapter creates a detailed picture of the social and economic conditions in Sicily during feudalism, highlighting the collaboration between the criminal bands, the nobility, and elements of the state, which is documented in A Tour through Sicily (1733) by the Scottish traveller Patrick Brydone. Arguing that this letter-diary in the travel-writing genre is fundamental for understanding the roots of the Sicilian Mafia, the author analyses Brydone’s assessment of class relations and, moreover, his critique of the ‘honourable brotherhood’ whose members kill, but with honour, are loyal and trusted by the nobility, and worthy of fear and respect, elements that become core features of the Mafia mystique. The socio-historical framings for the analyses of Gaspare Mosca and Giuseppe Rizzotto’s famous play I Mafiusi della Vicaria (1861) and Giuseppe Pitrè’s Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi del popolo siciliano (1889) inform the author’s critical distinctions between forms of brigandage in Sicily and in other areas, and the fratellanze as forefathers of the Mafia, commenting upon writings such as police reports and socio-cultural studies that explicitly denounce the Mafia as a criminal organisation. Nonetheless, as demonstrated by the author’s pithy analysis of the works by Mosca and Rizzotto, and Pitrè, the myth of the Mafiosi as the avengers of wrongs suffered by the oppressed has the strongest purchase on the popular imagination. Moreover, as Coluccello argues, the anthropological theories developed by Pitrè in his depictions of the character, values, and behaviour of the Mafia exert a long-lasting influence on the Sicilian political, economic, social, and cultural elite, and are deployed in support of Sicilianism and the denial of the Mafia as a crime organisation. Coluccello examines how this line of thought and representation is then articulated in such immensely popular works as Luigi Natoli’s I Beati Paoli (1909–10) as well as lesser known texts. Among these are Salvatore Morasca and Gian Battista Avellone’s Mafia (1911) and Cesare Mori’s two books, Tra le zagare, oltre la foschia (1923) and Con la mafia ai ferri corti (1932), the latter of which are intriguing for their incorporation of both Sicilianist theories and key components of Fascist ideology, such as virility and honour.

In the course of Coluccello’s discussion of counter-examples that critique the Mafia in Sicily as a crime organisation, the analysis of Don Luigi Sturzo’s play La mafia (staged in 1900) and Danilo Dolci’s Banditi a Partinico (1955), Inchiesta a Palermo (1956), and Spreco (1960) are particularly significant, providing extensive textual examples and the commentary these relatively overlooked works warrant. Aspiring to the ideal of creating a ‘theatre for the people’ (p. 82), Sturzo’s play makes visible the Mafia’s violence and power, which are protected by sectors of the political class. Dolci’s works are examined as paradigms of a new genre of writing in literary works on the Mafia highlighting sociological concerns and civil aims, which ‘contributed to a change in the idea of the Mafia in popular imagination in Italy and elsewhere’ (p. 177). The mapping of fictional discourses that denounce the Sicilian Mafia concludes with writings by Leonardo Sciascia, devoting the analysis almost exclusively to Il giorno della civetta (1961), credited with constituting ‘a real “turning point” towards a new image of the Mafia’ (p. 178). Significantly, Coluccello comments upon the ways Sciascia’s fiction also serves the Sicilianst myth of the Mafia.

In addition to summing up the main arguments presented in the study, the Conclusion provides a profile of the structure and strategies of Cosa Nostra from the 1970s to the early 1990s, employing textual support from the work of anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and the testimonies of the pentito Tommaso Buscetta. Coluccello’s final comments create a highly optimistic note, as he tells readers the Mafia is ‘widely challenged’ today, the Mafiosi are on the run and seen ‘by most as criminals’ (p. 224). Such claims seem better suited to the mid-1990s than to current times when, as most experts agree, the strategy of invisibility and silent collaboration with the state and big business deployed by Cosa Nostra since the 1992 Capaci and Via D’Amelio massacres has made it more dangerous than ever, allowing its traumatic acts of violence to fade from memory. Nonetheless, Coluccello’s cogent study constructs important critical perspectives that enable readers to better understand both the intimate historical links between the Mafia in Sicily and the political powers aligned with them, as well as discourses that legitimised or denounced them.